


The Caves That Hold Us Close

by lavender_macaronss



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Edited, Fluff, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Just best friends being the best, Pogtopia, Sane Wilbur Soot, platonic cuddling :), shippers pls dni
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:07:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27383167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavender_macaronss/pseuds/lavender_macaronss
Summary: It’s raining in the Dream SMP, and Pogtopia is struggling with a leaking roof, but that’s okay.It’s okay because they have Niki’s freshly cooked food, and they have each other(Formerly called “Of Thunderstorms and Family Dinners, this will be my first multiple chapter fic so go easy on me)
Relationships: Dave | Technoblade & Everyone, Niki | Nihachu & Toby Smith | Tubbo & Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit, Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit
Comments: 8
Kudos: 143





	1. Of Thunderstorms and Family Dinners

**Author's Note:**

> So this is gonna be a whole story, not just a little one shot, because I have ideas and they will not get out of my head.

Today the rain is pouring down all throughout the Dream SMP. The sort of rain that seeps into everything somehow, making it so that the ground itself is barely visible from all the pattering drops smacking into the ground at once. 

It falls through the ceiling of Tommy’s old house, drenching the floor and making the magma blocks in the doorway sizzle. It hammers against the roof of the semi-deconstructed White House, putting president Schlatt into an even worse mood than he usually is. It drips down into Pogtopia’s dirt entrance, leaving a rather irritated Tommy to place buckets everywhere for cold water to land in. The buckets aren’t really helping, since the rain seems to have a desire to land on Tommy regardless of where he’s standing.

“At least it isn’t reaching the cavern” Tommy thinks aloud as he puts down yet another bucket in the tiny space containing the ender chest and a single orange bed. Tommy hates the rain, especially since this particular storm seems to have a vendetta against him. He hates the way it traps him inside with nothing to do, hates how gloomy it makes everything seems. Rain, he’s always found, makes people moody. It especially makes him moody, but he doesn’t like to think about that.

He runs out of buckets after a while, so he goes back down into the depths of Pogtopia. Wilbur is there, talking to Niki about something or other. Probably trying to seem smart by telling her about indie music. Tommy stifles a comment on it, instead opting to go to the makeshift kitchen that Niki built. He grabs some bread and a carrot, thanking Niki for bringing food from Manburg as he stalks back to his room.

Tubbo is there, fiddling with a bit of string in Tommy’s bed.

“You’re in my bed.” Tommy says.

“Yes.” Tubbo responds.

Tommy shrugs and pushes Tubbo to the side so he can sit down as well. He eats his carrot sandwich, despite the disgusted looks from Tubbo.

“What? What’re you looking at?” He asks, almost annoyed but not really.

“You’ll get crumbs in the bed!” Tubbo scolds, trying his best to yank the sandwich away from Tommy. It doesn’t work, because though Tubbo is very determined, that means nothing in the face of Tommy’s superior strength (Tommy does a lot more PVP than Tubbo, who would rather drain the ocean or level up his villagers). Tommy keeps the sandwich out of Tubbo’s reach, more for his own amusement than any attachment to the sandwich itself. 

Tubbo pouts at him and Tommy sighs audibly, before stuffing the rest of his snack into his mouth.

“There,” he says, still chewing, “Now there’s no crumbs on the bed.” 

Tubbo glares at him, but then scoffs and goes back to messing about with a bit of string. Tommy watches, mildly intrigued, as Tubbo wraps the string around itself in a bunch of weird ways to make strange patterns that Tommy doesn’t understand at all. It’s entertaining though, so he keeps watching.

Tubbo notices him staring after a bit, a questioning looks appearing on his face

“Tommy?” He asks, snapping the taller boy out of whatever trance he was in

“What?- Oh, uh, sorry. I was just watching.” Tommy stammers, nervous for reasons he himself can’t explain. Tubbo smirks at him, probably about to say something stupid, so Tommy fixes him with a look that makes him shut up. Tubbo goes back to his string, and Tommy pulls out a book from the chest next to his bed. 

They sit there in silence for a bit, until rather suddenly, Tubbo turns to Tommy

“Do you think the rain’s stopped yet?” He asks out of nowhere. Tommy closes his book and gets out of bed, stretching.  
“Let’s go find out.” Tommy says and yanks Tubbo out of his bed.

The two boys make their way to the kitchen, where Niki and Wilbur are still happily chatting while Niki cooks something that smells nice in a pot on the fire. Tommy waves at them absentmindedly and Tubbo gives them an enthusiastic “Hi!” as they pass the kitchen. Wilbur returns the wave, so does Niki, albeit much more excitedly.

Tommy practically drags his best friend upstairs to the entrance of Pogtopia, raving about how much he hates rain and hopes it’s over. Tubbo thinks Tommy’s being unfair, but then again, he’s never had a rainstorm that’s out to get him. Tubbo loves the rain, most of the time. He likes the comforting sound of rain hitting the roof. He likes the fresh scent it leaves everywhere whenever it ends. He likes being curled up inside with Tommy during the worst of storms. 

He remembers back when they were both little, having just turned ten, that there was a storm so wild it knocked down trees in the area. He remembered the sound of thunder and the slamming of door from the intense wind all around them. He had been scared of thunder back then (truthfully he still is), and Tommy had hugged him until the storm passed. Maybe that’s why he likes the rain so much; it reminds him of how much he likes Tommy.

He is pulled from his thoughts by Tommy, who is still complaining about the weather. He doesn’t really listen, but he chuckles to himself about how childish Tommy can be, angry that he’s being kept inside because of a storm. 

They reach the top of the stairs after a minute or so. Tommy groans at the sight of rain still leaking into the room. Tubbo pulls out a bucket and adds it to the ever growing collection on the floor. He tries to wipe some of the water off of the bed, an attempt to keep it dry. It doesn’t work. Raindrops keep falling on Tommy, he notes, finding the blonde’s annoyed reaction a little funny.

They’re about to go back down when, quite suddenly, a loud clap of thunder rings out around them. Tubbo can’t stop the loud yelp he lets out at the sound. He also can’t help that he jumps a little, startled by the loud noise. This is unfortunate, because it means Tommy definitely noticed him freaking out, which will probably result in him being laughed at. 

He braces himself, waiting for a mean-spirited remark, but it never comes. Instead, he hears Tommy scoff behind him, and before he can say anything, Tommy grabs his hand and pulls him closer, so that he’s stood at his side, clinging to the taller boy’s arm. Tubbo is surprised, to say the least.

“You’re such a baby.” Tommy mutters under his breath, but he doesn’t stop holding him. In fact, he gently leads Tubbo down to the cavern. He holds him all the way down, and every time there’s a sound around them, Tommy jumps to pull his friend into a hasty, but still comforting hug. Tubbo is sure he’s never felt more grateful to have him as a friend.

When they get back down to the kitchen, Techno is there as well. Tommy gives him a disinterested wave. Tubbo isn’t disinterested though, so he waves at Techno politely, if a bit shyly. Niki tells them to be ready for supper in ten minutes and the boys nod as Tommy steers Tubbo into his room.

Though they’re down in the depths of the earth, the loud bangs from the storm outside are still audible, still scary, but Tommy holds onto him the same way he did back when they were ten years old and scared of rain. Tubbo finds himself clinging to Tommy’s shirt in much the same way he did all those years ago.

In six years the only real change is that they know more (and Tommy finally fulfilled his promise to grow taller than Tubbo, but that is something Tubbo would rather not think about). He finds it comforting that Tommy is still the exact same, and he hopes he is as well, hopes he gives Tommy the same sense of comforting familiarity.

In hindsight, neither of them has changed much at all.

After ten or so minutes, Wilbur yells that the food’s ready and they drag themselves out of bed and into the kitchen to see Niki holding a pot of stew that smells so good Tubbo is sure he must be drooling. She smiles at the youngest members of Pogtopia and hands them each a bowl, which she then fills with stew.

“The other two already have theirs, they’re in the dining room.” She tells them, and Tommy wonders absently when they built a dining room. Niki grabs her own bowl, which is already full, and guides the boys down into a room that Tommy is sure wasn’t there a week ago. He decides that it’s just Niki building rooms she thinks they should have, like back when she first joined L’manburg and kept adding little things to make it look nice. He smiles fondly at the memory, taking a seat at the table Niki must have built after she built the room. He sits down between Tubbo and Wilbur.

Niki starts talking, she tells them about how she really has to clean this cave and how she needs to build more rooms and how they haven’t been taking good enough care of themselves. She scolds all four of the other members, reminding them that they need to keep themselves alive just as much as they need to keep each other alive.

There is an embarrassed silence in the room, each of the four feeling ashamed for making Niki so upset. It’s strange, Techno thinks, how she can make even the “biggest men” ( Tommy’s words, not his) bend to her will without even meaning to, and even stranger that she only uses this advantage to benefit them.

Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, they each think how lucky they must be to have Niki there. She’s like an older sister, really. To all of them, even Wilbur and Techno, who are both older than her. She makes dinner and she keeps them hydrated and cleans their cuts and sets their broken bones, and then she does it all again the next day. 

It must be hard to be Niki, having to care for a bunch of reckless, silly boys that need her every day, but she doesn’t mind. How could she, when Wilbur took her into his nation without a second thought, when Tommy and Tubbo showed her their most prized possessions and let her take care of them, when Techno taught her how to farm and cook potatoes? No, she can’t possibly mind, because they’re her boys and she has to repay the kindness they never stop showing her.

When Niki was a little girl, she was always helpless, always needing her friends and family to protect her. Now she’s nineteen and she can protect them. She can protect the family she found in the nation she helped build. 

After a bit of silence, Tommy starts talking again. Telling them about how truly awful rainy days are and about how much he hates them. Techno chimes in with a “But the rain is good for potatoes!” And thus begins another silly squabble. Better than a fight in the pit, Wilbur thinks, still feeling guilty about what he put his family through when he hit rock bottom. 

Back when he was president, Wilbur promised himself that he would never do anything to hurt them, but when push came to shove, he did. He failed. He doesn’t know what would’ve happened if Tommy hadn’t snapped him out of it, and though he joins in the bickering and gladly makes fun of the teen, Wilbur is endlessly grateful for him. He’s endlessly grateful for them all, for Techno and his...interesting..advice that never fails to make him laugh, for Niki and her bottomless supply of empathy, for Tubbo and his unfailing loyalty, and for Tommy, for the boy who dragged him out of despair kicking and screaming. Wilbur is grateful for his family

Techno had never really had a family until Pogtopia. It was just him for most of his life, although he had friends. He knew Wilbur and he used to write him letters every month while he traveled the world. When Wilbur wrote that he needed help, Techno jumped at the chance to destroy a democratically elected government, and absolutely raced to join them. Then he met Pogtopia, which at the time was a scared teenager and an unstable Wilbur. He had thought, when he was small, that he would never let himself get too close to anyone, that he would live for himself and no one else, that he would stick with the strong and ignore the weak. Tommy and Wilbur had been weak, but he had stayed, for reasons that only became clear later after Niki and Tubbo had joined. He stayed because he loved them, because they mean the world to him.

They eat dinner. They laugh and they bicker and they build a small fire to keep the place warm, and when they’re all settled down, Wilbur takes out his old, dusty guitar and plays them a song. He sings to them about family and about love and about the strength from a bond that leaves a mark on your soul and a fire in your eyes.

Pogtopia is a family. A messy, occasionally dysfunctional family. A family of chaos and anarchy and loyalty so strong that it burns inside each of them like a forest fire. They would kill for each other and they would die for each other, and each of them knows it, somewhere in the back of their minds, because they’re family. Because they love each other.


	2. Of Wednesday Mornings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Niki loves Wednesdays, because Wednesday is the day she found her place in the world. The day she got everything she ever needed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Niki gets some backstory because I love her so freakin’ much

Niki wakes up early on Wednesday morning, the day after the storm. She can smell the fresh scent left behind after the rain that had seeped into Pogtopia despite the combined efforts of several buckets.

She cleans the entrance to their little cave, gets rid of all the buckets, mops the floor, changes the bedsheets and scrubs the floor. Niki is honestly not quite sure why she cleans so often. Perhaps it is the incessant feeling that someone will shout at her if she doesn’t.

When Niki was little, she had been in charge of chores, while her older brothers went to school. She hadn’t lived in the sort of area where people could afford school for girls, when girls could be kept at home to help around the house. She had never been strong, and she got hurt easily, so she did things that were safe while everyone else tiptoed around her to keep her out of harm’s way. Besides, her mother had needed help around the house, so Niki had happily provided it, feeding the animals and cooking lunch and cleaning the house while her mother cried. Ever since she could remember, Niki’s mother had cried. She was always upset, always wearing black and talking to pictures on the wall. When Niki was old enough to learn why, her brother explained it to her.

“She still misses him, you see. You never met him, but he was our brother. He went out one day and never came back. She talks to his picture.”  Is what he told her.

The brother she never met was named Philip, she learned when she heard her mother speaking to the pictures. Her mother always acted like he was still there. Her father was nothing like that, she remembered, he acted as though he’d never existed. Niki wondered which was worse, to be unable to accept his death, or to carry on by pretending he never lived.

She had many brothers. Seven, including Philip, and each of them had gone off to do great things. They were soldiers and doctors and Maxwell became the mayor of her tiny little town while Niki was left alone with two broken parents, caring for them until she turned sixteen, when they stopped needing to be cared for. She had buried them next to each other, and she had cried and then she went back to doing what needed to be done.

It was a Wednesday when she was sixteen that she met him. A boy a few years her senior with curly brown hair and an infectious smile, who came to stay in the inn her father had owned (now her brother Alexander’s), for a few days. He told her that his name was Wilbur and that he was going to end all the injustice in this world. He was strange in a way that Niki quite liked, telling her all about his family and about music she’d never heard of and about what independence means.

When he left, he made her promise to write him letters, and that she did. She wrote to him every week for a year and he told her all about the places he’d found. He wrote to her about the war, about his men and how he was certain they would win. She heard about it from her family as well. Heard about how there would be war against a tiny nation that had formed over in the Dream SMP’s land.

Then one day a letter came. Two simple words.

We won

Niki got on a horse the very same day. She told her brothers that they’d have to cook for themselves and clean their own houses, and then she left. She left on her horse and rode on it for months, still writing to Wilbur. Then she had bought a little row boat and had gone across the sea to the Dream SMP, where she found L’manburg.

Niki smiles at the memory of her first day there, (that was a Wednesday too, coincidentally) smiles at the memory of how she’d reached a nice little sandy beach to find Wilbur waiting for her. She hadn’t even bothered to dock the boat, just jumped out and leapt into his arms. He had caught her, and spun her around and told her how happy he was to see her. Then, she recalled, he’d pointed to two little boys who were only about 14 and introduced them as his right hand man and his Secretary of State. She had hugged them, without thinking, feeling sorry for what they’d been through. Then she met the rest of L’manburg and before she knew it she was a part of it all.

Niki stops smiling when she thinks about how quickly all of that was snatched away from her. She sighs and finishes up the cleaning, before she carefully packs away the cleaning supplies to go back downstairs to the rest of Pogtopia.   
  
Wilbur will be waking up soon, she knows, so she decides to start making breakfast for now. She steps into her temporary kitchen and checks in the chests, pulling out a few eggs, some chicken (not bacon, because Techno gets quite unnerved by eating bacon), and a few potatoes to keep the Blade happy.

She starts cooking, frying the eggs in one big pan and cooking the chicken in another while making hash browns with the potatoes. Niki is sure that cooking for her family is the reason that she always makes too much, absentmindedly cooking enough for a large family. She cooks the same way she did when she was 14 and cooking for nine other people, eight of which were men with stomachs that were seemingly bottomless and one of which was a woman who only ate when Niki fed her. She sighs, the thoughts of her mother and the sadness that surrounded her makes Niki ache.

She was right about timing though, because she is pulled from her thoughts by Wilbur, who shuffled sleepily into the kitchen and takes a seat and the makeshift counter Niki made. He smiles tiredly and gives her a wave.

“Morning, Niki. You’re up early, as usual.” He tells her, yawning loudly. 

She nods, a smile playing on her lips “Morning, Will. How’d you sleep?” She says it nonchalantly, like she isn’t worried. She is. She can hear him, in the darkest hours, sobbing softly. She can hear his whispered apologies and his heavy breaths. She can tell he hasn’t been sleeping well, and she wants to make sure he’s doing alright.

“Better than usual. What’s for breakfast?” He changes the subject, a wordless plea for Niki to drop it land although she doesn’t want to, she reluctantly lets it go.

“Sunny-side-up eggs, some chicken because Techno doesn’t like bacon, and hash browns.” He nods, a reassuring smile on his face

“Understandable, I wouldn’t like bacon either if I was Technoblade.” Wilbur tells her, and they lapse into a comfortable silence. 

For a little while, there’s a strange sense of secrecy, like this moment belongs to them, a secret shared between Wilbur and her. The only sound is the sizzling of the breakfast Niki’s making and a quiet melody that Wilbur starts to him after a bit. He reached out and takes her hand and she isn’t sure if this is real or if she’s standing in the kitchen and dreaming. She’s sure that he’s about to tell her something, he even opens his mouth.

But alas, a loud thud followed by a muffled shout from Tommy’s room pulls both of them out of the moment and Niki immediately assumes that something awful has happened. Schlatt’s found them, or someone has betrayed them, she’s sure. And then there’s another sound.

“Tommy! You dick!” She hears Tubbo yell, and suddenly the terror dissipates. It’s just Tubbo yelling because Tommy kicked him off the bed accidentally. Again. 

Wilbur yells at them to come to the kitchen, and he stares at them. The way he glared at them reminds Niki of Phil, Wilbur and Tommy’s father and Techno’s pseudo-parent. She’s only met him once, but he was kind and he was everything she never had in her own father. She writes to him once in a while. 

Wilbur glares at his little brother. “Tommy,” he says, “You know what to do.”

“What? But it wasn’t even on purpose!” He protests, “It’s not my fault he’s so tiny I can’t even tell he’s there until I kick him off!”

Wilbur fixes Tommy with a Look, the kind of Look that is written with a capital, because of the sheer weight it carries. Tommy stops his protests and looks off to the side, avoiding everyone’s eyes.

“...Sorry, Tubbo...” He mumbles

“Tommy.” Wilbur says, and somehow it’s an order

Tommy glares at Wilbur, “Sorry.” He says, louder than before.

Niki can’t stope herself from giggling loudly at the complete absurdity of the situation. She is standing in a makeshift kitchen in the middle of a cave, watching a sixteen year old apologize like a little boy and Niki can’t stop laughing. The confused looks everyone gives her only make her laugh harder, until she’s wheezing, barely able to breathe.

It takes a minute or two to calm her down, but once she’s calm, she sends the boys to wake up Techno, explaining that breakfast is ready. Tommy and Tubbo race off together, laughing and shouting all the way, probably annoying Techno into waking up.

She’s alone with Wilbur again, sitting there in the silence as she dishes up his food and hands his plate to him. He seems taken aback by it.

“Niki,” he says, stammering a little, “Y-You haven’t got to serve me like you’re some waitress!You’re not just a girl I met working at the inn I’m staying in anymore. You’re my friend!”

She shakes her head, “I know, Wilbur, but I like helping you out like this. I like being useful to Pogtopia, it’s why I do this.” 

He smiles nervously, and Niki would be lying if she said she didn’t find his embarrassed grin a little endearing. Then again, almost everything about Wilbur is endearing to her. That’s true of everyone in Pogtopia, she adores practically everything about them all.

Tommy and Tubbo come back, dragging Techno behind them as they argue about which of them won whatever little competition they were having. Techno sulks his way into the kitchen, only perking up when he sees the hash brown, which Niki loads into his plate. He shovels the food into his mouth while Niki scoops up some food for Tommy, Tubbo and herself. 

They sit down to eat together, like Niki’s family used to, but there is no sadness, no lonely mother who lost her mind when she lost her son, no father who can’t be anything but cold and stoic, no brothers who keep her safe but treat her like a baby. There’s just Tommy, telling his best friend about how he should just grown and Tubbo, complaining that that’s not how it works. There’s Techno, eating his breakfast with such gusto that one might think he was starved and Wilbur who tells Niki that her cooking is incredible. They all do, stopping whatever they were doing to compliment her. 

Niki can’t help the blush that spreads across her face or the tears that are suddenly pricking at the corners of her eyes . She can’t help the wide smile that covers her face as the tears slip down. She’s never had anything like this before, she’s never felt more appreciated. Back home, her family said nothing. Not a single thanks even as she slaved away for the first 17 years of her life to keep them happy. 

Pogtopia is much more of a family than her parents ever were, Niki thinks as the boys, her boys, crowd around her, trying to understand why she’s crying and smiling at the same time. She pulls them into a hug, and none of them pull away. They hold her in the way that her family should have when she was growing up. They give her the tenderness she never got when she was young.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.” She sobs, repeating it over and over until she can’t anymore. Until she stops crying and pulls away from them.

They don’t ask questions, they know her well enough. She’ll tell them if she needs to.

She takes a deep breath, by this point breakfast is over and she’s washing the dishes while they sit anxiously at the counter. Niki smiles and turns to her family.

“I love you guys.” She says, a wide smile on her face

They all return the sentiment, telling her that they love her too. Niki smiles at how embarrassed each of them looks when they say it (except for Tubbo, who doesn’t hesitate at all)

She loves Wednesdays. She loves the Wednesday that she met a boy who not only changed her life, but changed history. The boy who didn’t like the way things were so he made a whole new way to do things. She loves the Wednesday that she joined L’Manburg and met the people she now considers her family. The day she met two boys who shyly introduced themselves and fought in a war for their freedom and cried when she hugged them because they were so used to adults trying to hurt them all their lives.

And she loves today, because today is another perfect Wednesday for her to remember. The Wednesday that she finally received the love she never got during her childhood. The day that she finally felt like someone _cared about her._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woooooooo.
> 
> So yeah, this is no longer a one shot because there were ideas and they would not go away until I wrote them

**Author's Note:**

> Found family!! My favorite thing!! I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it :)
> 
> Also please comment any criticisms you have (in a polite way)


End file.
